


wish i could go back and change these years

by imdeansgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Character Death, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Sam Winchester, Pining, Pining Sam, Sad Ending, Slow Build, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdeansgirl/pseuds/imdeansgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you look back on your time with someone, it’s odd to see how you ended up where you are right now. Did you ever consider the millions of possibilities of who this person could be to you—a friend, a crush, a lover? Perhaps even your killer?</p>
<p>When Sam looks back on his time with Kevin, he sees a lot of things. And no, he never thought that they would end up here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wish i could go back and change these years

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up really sad lol. also i'm sorry if the time line is kind of... off? i'm super rusty on this show anymore tbh. so. have fun! (or don't, actually. that'd be kind of sadistic.) also, the title is from the song "changes" by black sabbath. i thought sevin and thought black sabbath and here we are :/

When you look back on your time with someone, it’s odd to see how you ended up where you are right now. For instance, when you first met, did you think that you’d be as close or as distant? Did you ever consider the millions of possibilities of who this person could be to you—a friend, a crush, a lover? Perhaps even your killer? Every relationship, every bond you form has the possibility to become something so, so different. It’s not like some cosmic force is telling you who this person is going to be to you—no soulmate-identifying marks, or timers on your wrists, or any other cliché romance plots.

When Sam looks back on his time with Kevin, he sees a lot of things. The first thing he sees, of course, is their first meeting. A little unorthodox, of course. Chasing after him, Meg on his heels, Kevin screaming as he scurries as fast as his little legs would carry him. _“I’m a… I’m Kevin Tran! I’m in Advanced Placement! Please don’t kill me!”_

And he remembers protecting him, of course. The tiny little prophet who could. He and Dean treated Kevin like a kid. (And Kevin protested every time.) Sam remembers looking at him, thinking, _He used to have a good life, a good home. He used to have a girlfriend, and a musical instrument, and his biggest worries were SAT Prep and acne care. And we screwed that all up for him._ Then Kevin would smile—a brilliant, magical, bright smile—and Sam would push the thought away for another time.

But even still, he couldn’t help but compare Kevin to his own life. When he was Kevin’s age—and it seems like too long, millions of years ago, but really, it’s only been… no, it’s been almost a decade—he didn’t want anything more than he wanted to go to college. He wanted to become a lawyer, to save people the _normal_ way, to prosper in his own world away from all this. But his brother and his father tore that away from him. Not that he blames Dean, of course—there’s usually not a place in the world he’d rather be in than side-by-side with his brother. Most days.

Then there’s the bad days. The ones when he remembers what he could’ve had. When he thinks of Jess, and her soft touches and gentle smiles and warm hugs. When he thinks of his college friends—Brady, even if he was a psychopath in the end. And once Kevin was there with them, and his eyes began to get tired, and he began to grow scruff on his neck, Sam couldn’t help but think that Kevin could’ve had that too. Had his own Jess, his own Brady. And maybe that’s why they were a little closer than Dean and Kevin were. Maybe that’s why, when it had been a really bad day, Kevin would call Sam up instead of his older brother. Sam was open to friendship, of course, so he accepted the phone calls and the smiles and the hugs.

Dean and Cas were sent to Purgatory, and everything went to Hell. (Pun only minimally intended.) Sam spent months trying to track down Kevin, and when he couldn’t, he decided to throw it all away. Without Dean—without _Kevin_ —it was all kind of pointless. He threw away the phones, settled in as a repairman, shacked up with Amelia. He couldn’t help but wonder, though, while laying in bed at night, or walking his dog, or looking at a cello in a store window, about Kevin. Even though he’d already added him as another tally in the long list of dead loved ones—and it made his chest ache to see Kevin’s name with John’s, Jess’s, and Ruby’s—he couldn’t fight the hope that, maybe, Kevin made it.

Of course, Dean came back. Tore Sam a new one for not looking for him, which was—stupid, yeah. But he had been so consumed with tracking down Crowley and leaving that all behind that he hadn’t even stopped to think that Dean needed his help. Dean was the older brother. He had always landed on his feet before, even—especially—when Sam hadn’t. He tried to explain, but Dean didn’t give him the chance.

After that, they found Kevin. He was pissed, too—thought Sam was ignoring him. When, really, it was the opposite. Kevin yelled until he was on the verge of tears, and Sam accepted it with no qualms. Which just made Kevin even more pissed, really.

All the dust settled, and they fell back into an old, easy friendship. _Harry Potter_ jokes and soft smiles and easy touches. Kevin began living with Garth on the boat, and Sam hated to see him go like that, but didn’t say anything.

When Kevin got sick—it was something stupid, like the flu—and Garth could no longer stay with him in the boat, it was Sam who volunteered to watch the Prophet instead. When he showed up, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, he could only think that if the kid looked tired normally, he looked even worse while under the weather. A heavy blanket was wrapped around his shoulders, and his nose was red, his eyes puffy.

Right off the bat, Kevin refused to be anywhere near Sam during the time that he stayed. Partially out of embarrassment, the Prophet admitted, but mostly because he didn’t want to get Sam sick. Sam insisted that he was fine, he could handle it, but Kevin locked the door to the tiny room in the back and didn’t open up. So Sam slept on the tiny couch, watched television, read book upon book.

About three days into watch duty, Sam woke up in the middle of the night when there was a loud clattering noise. It was three in the morning, and the boat was still dark and otherwise quiet. He spun his head around the room, trying to locate the source of the sound, when he spotted Kevin looking at him sheepishly from the small kitchen area, the cape-like blanket draped around his broad shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, through his impeccably stuffy nose. He bent down to pick up what he had dropped—a box of Kleenex—and stood straight again. “Couldn’t sleep,” he admitted with a shrug.

At that, Sam nodded. “You okay?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

Kevin went quiet for a little bit, frowned at Sam. “Maybe,” he said at length, his shoulders moving up and down in a shrug. “I’m sick, obviously. But I just can’t sleep on this boat anymore. It’s…” And he ducks his head, reaching up with the hand not holding the Kleenex tissue box to rub embarrassedly at the nape of his neck where his shaggy hair ends. “I don’t know. Lonely, I guess.”

Sam just blinked. Of all the possibilities, Sam had never considered Kevin might be _lonely._ But he understood. Garth can be a little… odd, and the prophet work was grueling. “You can talk to me,” he offered, and Kevin looked like he was going to say no—until he didn’t. He dragged his blanket and his Kleenex over to the couch, and took the seat by Sam’s feet. They stayed like that and talked, until they fell asleep—Kevin stretched out, resting on Sam’s chest, their legs tangled together. Sam woke up like that, and had that odd feeling one has when they don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

Just like that, Sam was infatuated. The smiles Kevin gave him turned beautiful, the touches he received were electrifying. He wasn’t really sure what that meant, but he thought it best to ignore it. Kevin was, after all, only nineteen; just a child, really, compared to Sam. So he did nothing about it, just let his feelings fester.

Kevin moved into the bunker, and there was a distinct lull. Nothing happened, no cliché kiss in the rain, and Sam was okay with that. Hell, it wasn’t the first time something he wanted had gone ignored. This was no different, and Sam was okay with that. He was.

But then the night everything changed came. Not everything, really—Sam was still Sam. A college dropout, a hunter, a Men of Letters. Kevin was still the same—tired, snappy, smiling. But everything still changed, at least a little.

Earlier in the night, Dean had gone to bed, claiming fatigue. Kevin, though, smiled and said he’d stay up and help Sam do research for the case, which he was grateful for—there were about ten books, and on his own, it would take him days to reach the end of them. But with Kevin’s help, they whizzed through the first five books. Sam was on book number three when he glanced up to see Kevin watching him. “Uh,” he said, chuckling nervously, the tips of his ears warm. “What’s up?”

It took a while for Kevin to respond, but eventually, he said, “I have known you for almost two years.” Sam nodded, flashing back to their first meeting. “And for two years, I have never…” And he swallowed, shook his head. “Never mind.”

As is Sam’s nature, he wasn’t going to just let it go like that. “Never what?” he asked, frowning.

Kevin sighed, leaned forward on his hand. “Never _mind,_ ” he said again, but Sam keeps looking at him until he rolls his eyes. “Never said anything,” he said, finally. Sam was about to ask what he meant by that, when Kevin glanced up at him and clarified, “I never said anything about how I feel about you.”

There was not a word in his vocabulary that Sam could have said just then. He could have said, “ _No._ ” But that didn’t feel right. He could’ve said, “ _Can’t._ ” But there was nothing there to stop them. He could’ve said, “ _Wrong._ ” But talking to Kevin was like finding the other half of a broken puzzle piece. It had never been _wrong,_ of all things. Together, they found a place in the crazy, stupid world. So he just swallowed.

The Prophet sighed, rubbed his eyes with his fist. “I’m sorry,” he said, followed by nervous laughter. “I’m so sorry. That was—that was stupid. You definitely don’t like—me like that. Um. I’ll go to bed.” He stood awkwardly, his legs wobbly from sitting for so long. 

Sam didn’t want him to go, so of all the things he could have said, he said, “I don’t think it was stupid.” At that, Kevin looked at him, eyes wide in surprise. “I think you were right.” And Sam stood, ignoring the tingling of his own legs, and rounds the table to crowd Kevin in against it.

The first tentative press of lips is something Sam will remember forever. Kevin let out a shaky exhale against him, sighed in a half-content and half-awed way, before bringing his arms up to wrap around Sam’s neck. Sam pressed his fingers into Kevin’s hips, kissed him for all it was worth, like it was their last day on Earth. And God, with them, it could’ve been.

Everything changed, and nothing at all at the same time. It was still their same old easiness, but with a passion both of them were fond of. Instead of just smiles, there were soft kisses, and the touches were less and less tentative. Dean didn’t know. But then again, Dean was so wrapped up in himself that Sam could have joined a circus and Dean wouldn’t have known.

From that day on, they discovered a lot of things together. They found that Kevin was just the right height to wrap his legs around Sam’s waist. They came across a spot where Kevin’s neck met his jaw that made him arch into Sam. They heard every possible way they could say each other’s names—in a whisper, in a shout, in a laugh—and felt it too. In a smile, in a kiss, in a touch. There was nothing they couldn’t do together, and they felt unstoppable.

Then Ezekiel came.

Sam didn’t know it was Ezekiel at the time, of course, but it makes a lot of sense, looking back. Time he lost, blackouts that he couldn’t remember. There were even times he would wake up, tangled together with sheets and Kevin, unable to tell where one pair of legs began and the next ended, that he wouldn’t remember getting there. He brushed it off.

But one little memory that Ezekiel decided to grace him with was Kevin’s murder.

Watching the light fill his eyes, his body fall to the floor. Watching himself place the notecard on top of the body of someone he loved and walking away.

He remembers all of that. He can wake up and see his hands reaching out, gripping harshly a face he used to caress. He killed Kevin Tran, from Advanced Placement, who used to have a good life. He used to live in a Bunker, with his boyfriend and his brother, and he would smile when he woke up and pour over books, and his biggest worries were being a Prophet of the Lord. And Sam killed him.

He screwed that all up for him.

So, next time you meet a person, think of how you’ll end up. Consider the millions of possibilities of who this person could be to you—a friend, a crush, a lover. Perhaps even their killer. Sam was all of these things to Kevin. And no, he never thought that they would end up here.


End file.
